Washington City Paper: Contents for Mar. 22

Playing in the Shadows
No recruiters scouted them. No cheerleaders rooted for them. No parents turned out to watch them. They lost 14 of 18 games this season, but the Cardozo Lady Clerks still found plenty to shoot for.

Cover Story

“Bitch, you ugly!” Rhonda Alston shouts from the back of a half-empty bus.

“I am the most beautiful black thing there is,” sasses back her target, a cheerleader near the front.

Rhonda is doing what she always does on the bus to basketball games: talking trash to the cheerleaders. It’s not that Rhonda doesn’t like the cheerleaders; aside from her coach and a few random fans, they are often the only witnesses when she’s shooting threes or driving to the hole for the Cardozo High School “Lady Clerks.” And while they don’t actually cheer at the girls’ games, the cheerleaders’ physical presence in the stands does offer the team a semblance of moral support.

But Rhonda is compelled to flay a few of the cheerleaders because they are girls, and girls at Cardozo don’t play basketball. “’Cause they think they cute,” she explains. “They think they might mess they hair or they nails or somethin’. That’s the reason a lot of girls don’t play. They come to the games to get boys off the teams. That’s the only reason they be comin’.”

Rhonda is 18 years of pug nose, gleaming eyes, and a fast mouth that hurtles from menacing scowl to amused smirk in a flash. Her hair is equally unreined, unfurling over the course of a day from a tidy bun into a whirl of nappy wisps. School, with its requisite hours of immobility, is something Rhonda endures in order to play basketball, a game that has obsessed her since she was 10 years old. ... Continued

Issue of Mar. 22 - 28, 1996

News and Features

Playing in the Shadows
No recruiters scouted them. No cheerleaders rooted for them. No parents turned out to watch them. They lost 14 of 18 games this season, but the Cardozo Lady Clerks still found plenty to shoot for.
Cover Story By Stephanie Mencimer
The Washington Times
Feature By Jeffrey Itell and David Plotz
Learning From Las Vegas
Feature By Stephanie Mencimer
Hello, My Name Is George, and I’ll Be Your Server This Evening...
D.C.’s Process Servers Push Paper and Spread Misery
The City By Eric Friedman
School’s Out, Offices In
The City By Mark Jenkins and Bill Rice
Kudos to City Paper...
The Mail By Jim McGrath
Dear Holly:
The Mail By Valencia Smith
One Foot in the Urn
The Mail By David Piercy
Constituent Lip Services
The Mail By Kathryn J. Schmidt
Smartyr
The Mail By Jim McGrath
Streetlife Serenade
The Mail By Bob Burton
On the Rag
The Mail By Jim Joy
Take Out the Trash
The Mail By Marc Rutledge
Vicarious Trashing
The Mail By Tonya Cross Brown
Most Eddie-fying
The Mail By Scott S. Shisler